Of Obasanjo’s Red Card to Buhari and Its Effects Beyond Buhari
There has been a lot of analysis of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter to President Buhari asking him to forego his obvious second term bid and strongly rebuking him for his ineptitude and corruption. I am not going to go in-depth into the contents of the letter because President Obasanjo was only stating the obvious and besides, in the space of only a few days, the letter had become one of the most widely read documents in Nigeria to the point of being sold as literature in traffic by vendors. I mean when it is so bad that you have the President’s wife and daughter attacking him on social media even a blind man knows that the end of the road is near. That is why I find it certainly disingenuous for the Buhari government, in its seven-page response to Obasanjo’s letter, to accuse the former President of being blind to the facts, saying “his criticism on the economy indicated that his busy schedule denied him appreciation of government’s efforts and resounding successes recorded in the economic sphere.”
“Resounding success recorded in the economic sphere.” What was Lai Mohammed thinking? Let me rephrase - what had Lai Mohammed been smoking? Is the government aware that only two days before it released its pathetic response to President Obasanjo, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics announced that 16 million Nigerians became unemployed in 2017? And it is an insult to our intelligence for the government’s response to say “permit me to say, however, that Nigeria would not have exited recession through a mere order or if the Administration had not made use of ‘’good Nigerians’’ who could help.” Who put us in the recession in the first place? How won’t Nigeria have entered recession under the Buhari administration when the President surrounds himself with spent forces and expired products like Professors Itse Sagay and Tam David West? Look at his cabinet? A complete disgrace, filled with square pegs in round holes. A French degree holder as agriculture minister! Why would we not have recession when we have a polytechnic product in a sensitive ministry like finance.
And the fact that Lai Mohammed reeled out the discredited tale that the Buhari administration had ramped up Nigeria’s electricity generation to 7,000 MWs just goes to show you how desperate they are to come up with ‘achievements’ from thin air!
According to the government-owned and Nigerian Electricity System Operator, the amount of power generated in Nigeria is 4,108MW. This was corroborated by the Spectator Index (the world’s top public utilities rating agency) which revealed last week that Nigeria generates just under 4,000 MWs of electricity.
I deal in facts and I have an unimpeachable reputation for the facts. If any member of the Buhari administration can contradict the data from their own government agency, Nigerian Electricity System Operator, I make a public vow to apologize to President Buhari in a full-page advertisement in a nationally read newspaper.
The fact is that both President Muhammadu Buhari and Lai Mohammed lied! No big surprise there really.
I have heard of ‘born to rule’, but Buhari appears born to fail and fail woefully. Look at how much damage he has done to the nation’s economy that was projected by CNNMoney to be the third-fastestgrowing economy in the world in 2015. Look at the deterioration of our internal security.
Go to farm and Fulani herdsmen may kill you. Go to market and inflation may kill you. Go to fuel station and fuel scarcity may kill you. Go to hospital and doctors’ strike may kill you. Go to police and SARS may kill you. Go to work and non-payment of salary by government may kill you. I have never seen a CHANGE that brings death like Buhari/APC!
In fact, someone bought petrol at N320per litre today and complained to me. What does he want from me? Am I Tam David West who promised Buhari will make petrol N40 per litre or Buhari that promised to make N1 equal to $1? Please enjoy the change and invite Fulani herdsmen to the party. But beyond the mediocre response to President Obasanjo read out by Lai Mohammed after this week’s Federal Executive Council meeting, I want to remind the President of a statement he made in 2015. The below is from a statement released by President Buhari on March 4, 2015.
“Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is a courageous patriot and statesman who tells the truth to power when he is convinced leaders are going wrong, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate retired General Muhammadu Buhari has said.”
My question to President Buhari is this: Does he still stand by this statement in the light of recent events?
Even going backward to when former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote his letter to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerians can very vividly remember how both the All Progressives Congress and its principal members poured encomiums on President Obasanjo.
It is rather surprising that both President Buhari and the All Progressives Congress are unable to respond to President Obasanjo’s letter today with those same encomiums. In response to Obasanjo’s letter to President Buhari, the APC speaking through its fallacious National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said, “The APC has asked to be given the opportunity to study the statement. We shall respond appropriately afterwards.” After studying the letter, the APC gave a non-response response on Thursday the 25th of January, 2018 saying inter alia:
“We disagree with the former president in what appears like a wholesale dismissal of the entire political system in the country.”
This is at variance with their response to Obasanjo’s letter to Jonathan when the APC said through its then National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, as follows: “President Jonathan should address the allegations that he has put 1,000 Nigerians on a ‘political watch-list’, in addition to training snipers at the same facility where Abacha’s killer squad was trained.”
The APC’s response to President Obasanjo did not address any of the allegations raised by the former President. Former President Obasanjo obviously loves Nigeria and he is a major stakeholder and his letter raised very salient points that should not and cannot be swept under the carpet. I see, however, that the APC’s in-house evil genius, Nasir El-Rufai, has been using his son to say the things he would like to say but can’t say about President Obasanjo, who brought him to political limelight. The younger El-Rufai accused former President Obasanjo of having a Messiah Complex. In fact, his exact words were:
“Once again, Obasanjo’s Messiah Complex manifests itself. The only Saint in Nigeria.” The thing is that El-Rufus’s son exposes the hypocrisy of his own father. How? Well the previous day, the senior El-Rufai had posted the following on facebook:
“Young people think insulting leaders on social media will change the way things are in Nigeria. No one would hand over the mantle of leadership to you simply because you’re young. If you want to chase “old people” from positions of power, you must join a party and participate in the process no matter how bad, dirty and dangerous you think it is.” In any event, I tried to defend Obasanjo and in doing so I got the wrong end of the stick from the younger El-Rufai.
Obviously, that Obasanjo letter really affected the Nasir El-Rufai family. His son even went further to unleash more insults on both Obasanjo and me.
In response to that, I must say that I never knew El-Rufai’s son’s temper is as short as his father’s height. But come to think of it, what did Obasanjo say about Buhari that the serial betrayer and Buhari’s house boy, El-Rufai, has not said before?
On October 4, 2010 El-Rufai said, “Mallam El-Rufai wishes to remind General Buhari that he has remained perpetually unelectable because his record as military head of state, and afterwards, is a warning that many Nigerians have wisely heeded. His INSENSITIVITY TO NIGERIA’S DIVERSITY AND HIS PAROCHIAL FOCUS are already well known”.
El-Rufai’s son should not think that I am in the same class as his dad. I am loyal. I am not a political prostitute like his father. I fear God. I have never been accused of consulting all manner of marabouts to further my political future! But back to President Obasanjo. Given its antecedents, let me just kindly nudge the Buhari administration to note that Nigerians don’t want to hear that killer Fulani herdsmen attacked President Obasanjo’s house or that the EFCC arrested one of his children. The dynamically disappointing duo of President Buhari and El-Rufai celebrated Obasanjo when he wrote against Jonathan. What is sauce for the goose, should also be sauce for the gander.
But if their antecedents are anything to go by, they will attempt to distract the public from Obasanjo’s missive. So let me beat them to it by asking my readers what they think the Buhari government will do to distract Nigerians’ attention from former President Obasanjo’s letter? A. Release new Chibok Girls B. ‘Find’ billions in Jonathan’s house C. Ask EFCC to probe Third Term D. Increase the price of fuel E. Make NTA show #BBNaija, or F. Release/Resurrect Nnamdi Kanu
In fact, so accurate was I in predicting the behaviour of the Buhari administration that just as I finished writing the above paragraph, I got news of two events that had happened SUDDENLY.
In the first sudden incidence meant to change the narrative, the EFCC detained Babachir Lawal, Buhari’s immediate-past Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
In the second event, the Buhari government suddenly announced that APC’s El-Rufai-led committee on Restructuring would now submit its report two days after the Obasanjo letter. No previous warning. It was not scheduled. It just came out of the blue. So predictable. So why now? They are desperately trying to deliver a flurry of activity to distract Nigerians from the truths contained in Obasanjo’s #RedCard to President Buhari
This is so knee-jerk predictable! I predicted on the day of the Obasanjo letter that going by their antecedents, the Buhari administration will take a dramatic decision to try to distract the public from the troubling epistle. Babachir’s detention is just a show that, like other arrests before it, will not lead to anything. They just think that Nigerians are so shallow that this will make you forget Obasanjo’s #RedCard to President Buhari.
All of a sudden, the same President Buhari, who said he was not in a hurry to take decisions last week, is the same President Buhari who has started hurriedly making decisions this week. Suddenly he is going to receive the report on restructuring tomorrow. Suddenly Babachir Lawal has been arrested. Suddenly. Suddenly. Why has a slow coach suddenly revved it’s engine to be the fastest train? Why suddenly? Obasanjo’s #RedCard, that is why!
Let me conclude by saying that I am so glad that President Obasanjo’s intervention came just as it seemed that the Buhari administration was going to get away with its evil policy of establishing cattle colonies. I am reasonably certain that after Obasanjo’s missive, that Policy will die a natural and well-deserved death.
In May 2016, President Buhari told us killer herdsmen are from Libya. One week later Lai Mohammed told us that killer herdsmen are not Nigerians. On January 24, 2015, the Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum said killer herdsmen are foreigners from Senegal and Mali. Only last week, the Presidency said it is the Islamic State that is killing Nigerians in the name of herdsmen. If all these statements are true, why does the Buhari government still want to give herdsmen Nigerian land as cattle colony? There is a strong disconnect between these statements and the quest for cattle colonies. You do not give colonies to invading foreigners. You send the army after them! That is what Ghana is doing and we say we are the Giant of Africa.
Perhaps President Obasanjo, being an Owu Yoruba warrior, intervened because of his deep knowledge of the history of the Yoruba people. Ilorin in Yoruba land once hosted a colony of Fulani warriors and clerics. Today, without mincing words, the Yoruba are second-class citizens in their own land. They bow to a Fulani emir. Their political elite are Fulani. The wealth of Ilorin is firmly and securely in the hands of the Fulani. During Muslim holidays the Yoruba original owners of the land line up in front of the house of a Fulani man to collect crumbs and in the process kill themselves via a stampede.
History does not repeat itself. Men repeat history. MARK MY WORDS, what happened in Ilorin will happen to any state, or community that allows itself to be used to host a cattle colony!
It is not for nothing that the Alake of Egba conferred the title of Jagunmolu of Egbaland on Olusegun Obasanjo after he collected the articles of surrender from the forces of the defunct Republic of Biafra. Jagunmolu means invincible warrior.
In 1824, it was a Yoruba general named Afonja (who was aare ona kakanfo of Oyo empire) that was foolish enough to invite Fulani colonialists led by Shehu Alimi (AKA Salih Janta) to Ilorin. In 2018 it is another Yoruba General named Obasanjo who was wise enough to blow the whistle on the immediate-past Grand Patron of Fulani herdsmen (Buhari was a Grand Patron of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria) who wants his kinsmen to not just colonize one town, but to colonize the whole of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
I am convinced that President Obasanjo saw through the ruse and figured out that the so-called cattle colony policy is just a subterfuge for the stealth implementation of a long-term dream of Fulani irredentists for Nigeria. The dream of conquering up to the Atlantic Ocean. God forbid. God forbid. GOD FORBID! By the way, my condolences to Afenifere leader, Chief Olu Falae, over today’s destruction of his farm by Fulani herdsmen. If a Yoruba leader, a former Minister for Finance, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation and a former Presidential candidate is not safe from Fulani herdsmen in Buhari’s Nigeria, who is safe? Certainly not you and I. Perhaps, just perhaps Falae’s ordeal reminded Obasanjo of his own ordeal between 1995 and 1998.